Fundraisers for cancer center, good corporate citizen winners

Published
5:45 am EDT, Sunday, June 10, 2012

June has certainly given us a wide range of weather these days, and it seems to include a daily shower or two. You leave home, sunglasses in place, under a bright, blue sky. When you get to the other side of town, suddenly clouds appear and make you wish you had taken an umbrella.

It is not what we usually expect in June, but we'll survive -- after all, this is New England. In the words of Mark Twain, "One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it."

We now get to our task of seeking winners for our weekly awards, scanning the horizon in the Greater Norwalk area and beyond.

Bouquets to second-grade class members at Wolfpit Elementary School who used their reading talents for a good cause.

Shawn Sullivan's second-graders used a reading marathon to raise $4,003.02 for Norwalk Hospital's Whittingham Cancer Center. The youngsters acquired sponsors who would donate a certain amount of money for every minute the student read his or her book. Each student read for a total of about 30 hours.

The students were rewarded with a visit to the cancer center with the chief radiology oncologist as their guide.

Sullivan's classes have been raising money for the cancer center for the last eight years and to date have raised more than $43,000.

A brickbat for some well-meaning residents who decorate utility poles with signs proclaiming tag sales.

We have no problem with their advertising their sale. (Although technically it is illegal to post signs on utility poles.) We just wish that after the sale they would go around and remove them.

The ban on signs goes back to the days before television and the Internet when the main way politicians promoted their candidacy was to plaster utility poles with their mug shots.

Bouquets to a locally-based worldwide corporation that reached beyond Norwalk as an outstanding corporate citizen.

Diageo North America, the major drinks corporation located on Route 7, donated $30,000 to the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport to help the zoo kick off its new Pampas Plains South American Adventure exhibit.

The exhibit will feature animals from Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, part of a major expansion that will be completed in 2017 at a cost of $5 million.

In addition to the large donation, more than 100 Diageo employees turned out to work on projects at the zoo, including construction, painting and gardening.

The zoo director labeled the efforts of the volunteers as "priceless."